Ah, yes. This is another complication, language evolves. The written form often reflects how the language was spoken in the past (and may still remain so in some regions). However, some aspects of spoken language also reflect how the language was spoken in the past.
So you get these weird situations where the written form is in conflict with some aspects of the speech, but if you tried to fix it, it would then be in conflict with some other aspects of the speech.
I wonder what would happen if literacy magically disappeared overnight, but people would still remember the idea of literacy, and would try to reinvent the written form from scratch.
In the example of milk, perhaps they would ultimately conclude that the second vowel needs to be “о”. However, could they (using only the Moscow pronunciation) figure out the same about the first vowel?
Ah, yes. This is another complication, language evolves. The written form often reflects how the language was spoken in the past (and may still remain so in some regions). However, some aspects of spoken language also reflect how the language was spoken in the past.
So you get these weird situations where the written form is in conflict with some aspects of the speech, but if you tried to fix it, it would then be in conflict with some other aspects of the speech.
I wonder what would happen if literacy magically disappeared overnight, but people would still remember the idea of literacy, and would try to reinvent the written form from scratch.
In the example of milk, perhaps they would ultimately conclude that the second vowel needs to be “о”. However, could they (using only the Moscow pronunciation) figure out the same about the first vowel?